First, we heard that four state Democratic parties signed fund-raising pacts with Hillary Clinton. These are the crucial primary state of New Hampshire; also, Mississippi, Virginia and Wisconsin.
“The four are a small fraction of the dozens of state parties that the Hillary for America campaign has asked to join such agreements. Many are still considering the request,” writes the New York Times.
“Some officials at state parties suggested the practice is similar to a fund-raising agreement with the campaign of a sitting senator or an insurgent in a statewide race.” In other words, we’re told, it’s accepted practice for the party organization to support the incumbent.
Then, we’re hearing that the DNC announces a fundraising agreement with Clinton campaign. “The DNC says it’s pursuing similar agreements with the other Democratic primary campaigns,”, writes Politico – “but so far, those haven’t materialized.”
Business as usual, you’ll say. Expected! Par for the course! Back eight years ago, the Howard Dean-run DNC also announced fundraising agreements with the Democrat candidates. However, that was a joint agreement with then-candidates Obama and Clinton.
All the while the Republicans have a long list of debates scheduled (the first of which, on Fox, already took place, in front of a record 24 million viewers). But the DNC will sponsor the first debate to start as late as Oct 13, with only four debates before the early state primaries.
The debate schedule makes Bernie Sanders unhappy.
“In my view”, says Sanders, “Democrats will not retain the White House, will not regain the Senate or the U.S. House, will not be successful in dozens of governor races across the country, unless we generate excitement and momentum and produce a huge voter turnout. With all due respect — and I do not mean to insult anyone here — that turnout, that enthusiasm, will not happen with politics as usual.”
Martin O’Malley is more blunt: he says the debate calendar is rigged to aid Hillary Clinton.
“We are the Democratic Party, not the Undemocratic Party,” O’Malley says. “If we are to debate debates, the topic should be how many, not how few.”
Which brings up the question. Why are Shultz and others putting their thumb on the scale, in regards to debate schedules and fundraising?
Response is crickets chirping.
Coincidence that the debate schedule was designed to be very favorable for Hillary or that Hillary would get exclusive co-fundraising deals with the DNC? I think not.
Also, there should be even more outrage leveled at Schultz for having just blocked a DNC resolution to support the President’s nuclear deal with Iran, one of his signature achievements and the most important thing he’s done in his second term… which Schultz just so happens to oppose. She let her personal political beliefs directly interfere with the will of the party, which as Chairwoman is a major no-no, and she did it in a way that prevented the party from officially supporting the signature achievement of our sitting President and Democratic standard bearer.
And that’s to say nothing of the long line of scandals Schultz has been involved in over the past few years, some of which are frankly reflective of a bitter, vindictive person who has no place at the head of our party.
Schultz is a walking disaster for the Democratic Party and needs to be given her walking papers. Bring back Dean.
She’s been bad for the DNC for a long time now, undermining the President (like she did with the resolution to support his nuclear deal with Iran) in pursuit of her own agenda, and in general one mess after another.
Isn’t it the case that the President nominates or otherwise strongly suggests a chair for his party’s national committee and said national committee usually goes along? I have yet to hear anything good about the Obama-Schultz relationship, though I’ve heard DWS likes getting her picture taken with Obama a lot.
Personally I think a case can be made for someone without a public preference for the next presidential nominee and not a current elected official. I’d like to see John Walsh in the role.
Ed Rogers is a Republican consultant, but his piece in the Washington Post pretty much sums up the consensus among national players within both Parties:
n/t
…because the culture of modern campaigning has devolved from structured permanent Party organizations to election-specific, candidate-centered organizations. Democratic politics is vendor-centric, at the expense of ongoing grassroots work, and Party infrastructure is collateral damage to this.
As a result, the DNC is perceived as a purely symbolic organization, of no real importance, within the Beltway.
party organizations, but I think it’s fair to say that those structured permanent organizations have considerably changed, and are independent from the party itself, even if they serve it.
VAN/Voter Builder is a structured permanent organization of massive importance. As is ActBlue. And even new things that no one’s ever heard of, but is deeply important in a major election, like having a good bank.
And so are organizations new and old, like the AFL-CIO and NARAL and Daily Kos and Think Progress, that promulgate democratic ideals, create grassroots communities and/or fight for the middle and working class.
Unfortunately, a lot of party elites look at all these new and old organizations and think, “why do we need a DNC anyway?”
I wish they could have looked at the coordinated campaigns John Walsh led in Massachusetts, or bought into what Howard Dean was doing with the 50 state plan (which achieved a lot of success even in the short time span it was allowed to live), but unfortunately the Democratic establishment has long neglected long-term party building efforts for whatever is convenient and easiest at the time.
Heck, that’s in many ways why things like ActBlue and VAN have had so much success — there was a desperate need for these things that the party wasn’t going to build (even if it could have).
Instead of letting DWS continue to lead the DNC into irrelevancy, they should replace her with someone who has a proactive vision of what the DNC can do, and we should be putting together groups of people at the DNC to think of what our party’s infrastructure is missing, and how the DNC could be a part of filling that gap.
The Republican Party is playing the long game and they’ve been very, very successful at it. While we were busy trying to win swing states and just enough congressional seats to keep majorities, they were busy flooding state legislative seats with money to gerrymander congress into a near-permanent Republican majority, trying to deny the vote to communities that vote D and are actively pursuing cases in court that would be catastrophic for labor organizations.
We need to start being forward thinking, and one of the best ways to do that is to tap into our considerably larger grassroots, and the party infrastructure can be key to that. Our town, ward and city committees in Massachusetts, working in concert with the DSC, are a great example… but unfortunately not every state even has local committees as a vehicle to build permanent, local bases of activists to pound the pavement, help train each other and help spread issues of importance inside their communities that could increase turnout or strengthen the Democratic brand.
We need an active party infrastructure in every community across America, building our capacity to win hearts and minds and elections. We need to stay cutting edge and build new tools that help in that effort, and the DNC is an organization that could be a strong part of that.
At the very, very least, we need a DNC chair that isn’t undermining our party because it could hurt her election chances, upset her donor base or result in a Republican friend of hers losing a seat.
Should not be an elected official, that’s just asking for a conflict of interest…
I have heard Governor Dukakis talk about this, before and after, the trainwreck that was the 2014 election and I completely agree with him. I think John Walsh would be a great choice. DWS is horrible, she needs to go, but can you really blame a sitting politican for using her post atop the party to promote her own interests?
It should be a full time job, where the Chair is the leader in both long term and short term strategy for the party.
What Red State did in 2010, ruined an incredible presidency and the fact that they did this uncontested is inexcusable. I’m not sure if DWS was running the DNC at the time but the party should have taken a hard look at itself after that. We will have to deal with effects of that until at least 2020.
All the more reason to put the good Doctor back in charge.
She thought the President was going to sack her, so she lined up people to support her, with a planned strategy to attack the President as anti-woman and anti-semitic. I wish I could make this stuff up.
My guess is the President doesn’t think this is worth a public squabble, so he figured he’d let her ride out her term as chair, but I can’t really answer why he hasn’t sent her packing yet.
It’s worse than even in that politico article, though. Found this story that came out yesterday, too, where it’s described how she
-Vocally opposed the President’s efforts to relax diplomatic ties with Cuba.
-Opposed the efforts of the party to oust 3 different Congressional Republicans — you know, one of the entire points of the freaking DNC and the only reason why she has the job as DNC chair — because those Republicans were friends of hers.
John Walsh would make an excellent DNC chair. Hard worker, he was very good at maximizing election results; he never undermined the Governor and wouldn’t let his personal relationships get in the way of doing his job. I’d love to see him as DNC chair, but usually the post goes to someone more involved with national politics, like a Congressperson who’s known for fundraising and does TV well, but may have a career that’s much more about them than the party, which is part of the problem.
Personally, I think the DNC would be much better off if it hired chairs who were excellent state chairs first, instead of mediocre but well known and entirely too ambitious Congresspeople.
She now supports the Iran agreement.
I am not a big O’Malley fan, but his speech was rhetorically powerful and a bold call to action and the reaction that Schultz had to it was priceless. .
His best point is that a record 24 million potential voters tuned into the Trump trainwreck debate, which is now dominating presidential coverage, while our candidates are seeing their exposure trickle out into the media with little fanfare. Obviously O’Malley has some self interest in getting more coverage, but I would argue it would improve our brand and reintroduce voters earlier to our candidates. And it’s essential practice for the front-runner she shouldn’t want to skirt.
Saw that, and was glad he took up the case — and Sanders got some good coverage following up on O’Malley’s speech, agreeing with it.
The Emperor is wearing no clothes at the DNC right now. O’Malley pointed that out and that’s why she gave him that glare. Given that was at the DNC meeting and people (presumably the vast majority of whom were members) were cheering him as he made a speech *about* increasing the number of debates, it’s pretty clear where everyone at the DNC is at except Deborah Wasserman Schultz.
More debates is good for our party. It gets our ideas out there and makes our candidates look good — all of them.
We don’t need the number of debates that we had for the 08 election, but we need more than the number scheduled now, and we *especially* need them earlier than scheduled now. Like, yesterday.
She’s clearly made this schedule because she thought it would benefit Clinton, but in reality this is hurting Clinton by making her look weak when in reality she’s a strong debater, and by denying Clinton the opportunity to help put the negative stories behind her. Nothing would end “email-gate” faster and change the narrative (and trends) of Hillary’s campaign quicker than a really strong debate performance.
And, yeah, a lot of people would tune in, which is really important when all the people are hearing is how we need to build giant fences around Mexico and other nativist and racist BS.
And I actually think our issues based campaign would impress swing voters and stand in stark contrast to the other stage. The right is animated by limiting the future of America to a select group of people, we should be animated by expanding the future of America to include as many people as possible but especially minorities and working families. That’s the basic contrast.